Soul Project gets approval

Chennai: Confed-ITA's executive committee (EC) that met yesterday in Tutucorin unanimously approved the association's initiative-Soul Project, which was proposed for the welfare of the channel partners across Tamil Nadu and Puducherry.

PN Prasad, President, Confed-ITA informed that the project would be rolled out soon. “Today the executive committee of Confed gave its unanimous support for rolling out Soul Project across Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. The initiative would be implemented soon once the complete system is in place. We will start writing to vendors immediately for their support in taking this project forward,” he said.

Prasad also informed that the association is in talks with a software company to develop a system to monitor the transactions and make the complete information easily available to all members with a click from their place. “We wanted to bring in complete transparency into the whole system as it is the dealers money that is being collected from them for their own welfare. We are also in the process of finding an alternate mechanism of collecting the amount that arrives out of the project from the vendors directly rather than collecting it from the distributors in order to make the process simpler and three vendors have already agreed to this idea.”

As per the initiative each purchase from tier-1 distributor will contribute 10 paisa per Rs 100 of invoice value towards that member's contribution towards the fund. (For instance, Rs 3 per printer of Rs 3,000 value and Rs 30 per laptop of Rs 30,000 value).

Channel partners in Confed-ITA would be contributing a small percentage of their turnover towards building a corpus which will be used entirely for channel members welfare.

Back-end incentives

In the meantime, since most of the vendors haven't given clarifications on the service tax issue on back-end rebates, Confed has proposed to give it another try. “We would be writing to the vendors again in order to get their clarifications on the service tax being levied on the back-end incentives. This time we may be forced to take suitable action if vendors fail to give any response within the stipulated time line,” Prasad averred.

The executive committee of Confed has also made it clear that in smaller regions, especially upcountry places, there can only be one authorized association. Prasad said that the partners in the region must try to sort out their issues accordingly and must try to unite under one association. The decision was made after Trichy IT association, an offshoot of Association For Computer Traders Trichy (ACTT), put forward a strong request for joining Confed after registering the association legally.

Confed-ITA would also be making available the bulletins of the EC meeting that was held yesterday. “We have decided to print and circulate an eight page bulletin after every EC meeting of Confed. This way partners are aware of the discussions that took place in the EC meeting, as every member couldn't be a part of it. Erode IT Association (EDITA) would be taking care of bringing out the bulletin, which would have advertisements from the vendors to make it financially independent,” Prasad informed.

He also informed that the yearly Get Together to Grow Together meeting, that is held between the vendors and channel partners, would be held in Puducherry in the second week of July.

SES asked to furnish documents

The controversial scam involving sales executive of SES Technologies and Sree Computers, who duped channel partners in Tamil Nadu for several crores, might take a new turn as Confed-ITA has taken up the issue with its executive committee's approval. Considering the fact that SES Technologies is not agreeing to resolve the issue with the affected channel partners, the association will be asking the distributor to provide all the facts they have within the next 15 days. “It has been decided that SES should provide all the facts available with them in order to support their claim, as we aren't compromised with their revelations. Confed would contemplate to initiate suitable action against them, if they fail to provide the actual facts they claim they have,” informed Prasad.